Choreographing collaborative academic experiences

SSS10 Proceedings of the 10th International Space Syntax Symposium

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Choreographing collaborative academic experiences: The ‘quiet building’ and the ‘airport lounge’

Yelena McLane Florida State University, USA [email protected]

Abstract

Like a hidden curriculum, buildings influence learning by engaging, negotiating, and re-aligning users’ experiences with and within architectural space. A number of studies have employed space syntax to analyse educational buildings and assess the effects that various designs have on collaboration, creativity, and learning outcomes. In that spirit, this paper presents a new comparative study of two recently-completed university buildings: the William Johnston Building at Florida State University (2011 – Tallahassee, Florida), which I characterise as a ‘quiet building’; and the Mandel Center for the Humanities at Brandeis University (2010 – Waltham, Massachusetts), which I characterise as having the attributes of an ‘airport lounge’. Through a combination of space syntax analysis and qualitative research methods, I identify within each building the spatial elements and characteristics that enhance unplanned face-to-face encounters and communications, describe how spaces accommodate such encounters, and explore users’ perceptions and interpretations of collaborative experiences as a reflection of the potential for collaboration inherent in the morphologies of each building. I begin by distinguishing the three major subjects of my inquiry: the individual, the individual’s social milieus, and the educational architectural spaces that contain, shape, and mediate individual and social experiences. The relationship between these components constitute a ‘pedagogy of architecture’, which, in the words of Elizabeth Ellsworth, ‘create a fluid moving pivot place that puts inside and outside, self and other, personal and social into relation’. These subjects converge in my interpretation of learning as a relational process centred upon the individual and shaped by the spaces that individuals navigate and inhabit. My findings emerge from the alignment of two data sets. The spatial analysis of the buildings includes examination of their programs and compositions, illustrated by justified graphs, together with analysis of potential space uses from the perspectives of permeability through axial line maps and convex maps, and visibility through visibility graphs. I juxtapose this technical information with qualitative data gathered through on-site observations and interviews, which reveal not only what collaborations could potentially happen in each of the two buildings, but why actual collaborations do happen. A building’s spatial configuration (including visibility and permeability characteristics) can either support or inhibit the formation of social communities and enhance or suppress users’ desire to collaborate, especially when combined with discrete non-spatial factors, including institutional culture and extracurricular programming. Overall, the results of this study suggest that educational spaces that most successfully support meaningful social and collaborative experiences are more enclosed, inhibit unproductive movement, and have narrow user profiles. The ‘airport lounge’ model invites and supports unintentional encounters and is perceived as dynamic, fluid, and responsive to its users. In contrast, the ‘quiet building’ model suppresses the collaborative instinct and is perceived as institutional and indifferent to individual users’ needs. Surprisingly, the morphologies of these two models can be very similar, and I conclude with specific spatial attributes of the William Johnston Building and the Mandel Center that may explain, in part, the stark differences in the ways that these buildings function.

Keywords

Educational buildings, pedagogy, spatial configuration, social encounters, collaboration.

Y McLane Choreographing collaborative academic experiences: the ‘quiet building’ and the ‘airport lounge’.

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mailto:[email protected]


1. Introduction

Education is no longer conceived merely as expanding one’s empirical knowledge or improving the ways that existing knowledge is codified, but by the extent to which broader explorations and efficiencies are obtained in ‘all manner of activity’ (Department of Trade and Industry, 1998). These activities have strong spatial dimensions, and educational spaces may be viewed as abstract representations of related social and educational paradigms (Lefebvre, 1991). Buildings play an important role in the learning process by engaging, negotiating, and re-aligning sensory and perceptual experiences (Ellsworth, 2005). Layouts and configurations shape pedagogical potential, directly or indirectly inform teaching methods and behavioural and communication patterns, and influence learning outcomes. Education is largely a social phenomenon, and learning is increasingly a social activity in which collaboration is instrumental in creating and sharing new knowledge (Matthews, Andrews and Adams, 2011; Kolb and Kolb, 2005; Paavola, Lipponen and Hakkarainen, 2004). It follows that educational spaces constitute a pedagogy of architecture with the potential to facilitate or impede interactions between students, between teachers, and between students and teachers, contributing to a general atmosphere of scholarly socialization and collaboration. In this paper I explore how contemporary educational buildings engender experiences that suggest the potential (or lack of potential) for academic collaboration. I conduct a comparative analysis of the programmatic makeup, spatial structures, and uses of two higher education buildings: one at Florida State University (Tallahassee, Florida, USA) and one at Brandeis University (Waltham, Massachusetts, USA). By employing a combination of space syntax theory and qualitative methods, I identify the spatial qualities conducive to planned or unexpected face-to-face encounters, analyse how these qualities accommodate such encounters, and share how users perceive and interpret their collaborative experiences within the two buildings.

2. Configuration, potentiality and interaction

Built environments are complex unities of physical form, theoretical abstraction and social characteristics (Lefebvre, 1991). This corresponds to three interrelated functions of educational spaces: first, as material structures that shelter and accommodate learning activities; second, as mediums for designers’ interpretation and execution of educational paradigms; and third, as representations of social and organizational relationships between learners and educators. Space syntax theory, as developed by Hillier and Hanson (1984), allows for the exploration of relationships between buildings’ geometries and spatial configurations, users’ experiences within those buildings, and associated social and cultural patterns (Hiller, 2005). Hillier (2007) emphasised that human behaviour does not ‘simply happen’ in space, but displays its own spatial forms: ‘encountering, congregating, avoiding, interacting, dwelling, teaching, eating, conferring are not just activities that happen in space – they constitute spatial patterns’ (p. 29). Relationships between activities and spatial patterns are not mere superimpositions of one over another, but emerge from a dynamic and interconnected system of elements within these spaces (Ibid.).

Analyses of spatial structures and observations of their functions relative to user activities suggest that spaces embody social patterns (Hillier, 2005). Configurations can reproduce or codify social relationships through spatial segregations, thus performing a conservative function (Ibid., see also Hillier and Penn, 1991). Spaces may also work in a generative mode and facilitate the creation of ‘new relationships, new ideas, new products, and even knowledge’ (Hillier and Penn, 1991, p. 29) by creating a condition of ‘co-presence’ through the integration of spaces (Hillier, 2005, p. 10).

Shifting away from predetermined pedagogical and social structures in educational buildings allows for open-ended interpretations of their functional possibilities. In theory, more open, permeable, and flexible configurations leave usages more ambiguous and more susceptible to individual interpretation and choice. Potentially, this increases opportunities for social interaction between space users from which academic collaboration can emerge.


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3. Spatial analysis and knowledge formation and sharing

A number of recent space syntax studies have explored how structured spaces support or impede serendipitous encounters and increase the possibility for collaborative knowledge formation in academic environments (e.g., Appel-Meulenbroek, 2009; Heitor and Tomé, 2009; Koch, Bergström, and Marcus, 2012; Sailer, Marmot and Penn, 2012). These studies have reinforced some key assumptions articulated in Hillier and Penn’s work (1991): randomization of configurations and communication patterns within academic environments play a critical role in forming and sharing scientific knowledge; and spatial layouts can liberate knowledge from the boundaries of individual research areas and organizational hierarchies. Appel-Meulenbroek (2009) identified two factors that influence communication and knowledge sharing within a spatial configuration: movement and co-presence. The author concluded that out of a number of co-presence defining variables, visual accessibility has the greatest influence on knowledge sharing. Heitor and Tomé (2009) identified meaningful correlations between space and mobility. The authors proposed that their space-use analysis model could be adapted for researching how spatial configurations regulate social and informational functions. In a longitudinal mixed methods study, Sailer, Marmot, and Penn (2012) investigated interconnectivity between spatial configuration and the social structure of an academic organization, and analysed patterns of interaction and formation of collaborative networks. The study’s findings affirmed that spatial and social factors shape the structure and evolution of academic collaboration on both an organizational and individual level. The authors contextualised the thesis that buildings are ‘mechanisms that bring people together or keep them apart’ (p. 27) (see also Hillier and Hanson, 1984). On the programmatic level, spaces that bring people together, such as common rooms, ‘significantly transform network patterns…and increase network cohesion’ (p. 28). On the morphological level, greater spatial permeability and visual accessibility increases the levels of ‘contact and usefulness’ (p. 28). Overall, Sailer, Marmot, and Penn’s findings supported the assumption that spatial configurations affect collaborative networks, a conclusion directly pertinent to the subject of this study. In research conducted by Koch, Bergström, and Marcus (2012) space syntax methods were applied to the analysis of academic buildings on the campus of the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, Sweden. The researchers offered a comparative analysis three edifices built over the last one hundred years. The findings indicated that spatial configurations were strongly influenced by academic structures in vogue at the time of construction. The study also examined the ways in which spatial concepts such as flexibility and adaptability reflected pedagogical and institutional contexts. In particular, the authors discussed atria and meeting places as elements that can increase visual awareness and interpersonal communication, a design echoed in the two buildings investigated in this study. These several studies offer a variety of approaches to researching the effect of spatial configurations on academic activities, social encounters, and knowledge formation and sharing, while only tangentially addressing how collaborative experiences may be shaped by spatial configurations. This inquiry aims to expand upon this body of research with a particular focus on the connection between spatial configuration and the potential for scholarly socialization.

4. Methodology

This paper presents a comparative study of two recently-completed university buildings: the William Johnston Building (WJB) at Florida State University (2011) and the Mandel Center for the Humanities (MCH) at Brandeis University (2010). The study combined two methods of data collection and analysis—space syntax (Hillier and Hanson, 1984; Hillier, 2007) and qualitative ethnography (Eisner, 1998; Savin-Baden and Major, 2012). The data for the spatial analyses were obtained from the Visual


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Graph Analysis generated by depthmapX (Varoudis, 2012). Qualitative data were collected through on-site observations, interviews, architectural plans, document analysis, and photography1.

Combining these research methods allowed for the merging of two distinct approaches to investigating educational spaces: syntactic analysis, interpreting spaces as representations of social patterns to examine the effects that layouts have on function (Hillier, 2005, p. 8); and ethnographic analysis, introducing users’ voices to reveal perceptions, interpretations, assessments, and experiences of spaces on a daily basis. Such a mixed methods approach addresses educational spaces in their ‘primary experiential form’, which users ‘confront in the real world of everyday life’ (Ibid., p. 3). The two data sets complement and explain each other: spatial analysis allows us to see how buildings’ spatial configurations work, while qualitative data offers first-hand experiences that explain why configurations work that way. Standing alone, space users’ individual accounts would remain isolated and appear random if not for the empirical quantitative evidence provided by syntactic analysis.

5. The two buildings

The WJB is located at the heart of the historic campus of Florida State University. It was originally built in 1939 as a dining hall for the Florida State College for Women (Sellers, 1995). The layout was symmetrical, with a centrally located entrance formed by a monumental staircase. Movement was straightforward and hierarchical, with the first floor entry vestibule controlling communication between dining spaces to the right and to the left, and leading to formal dining halls and president’s dining room on the upper floor. The building served as a dining hall until 1964, at which point it became a mixed use space for a number of academic programs and administrative offices (Facilities Department, 2007, p. 5).

In 2011 the WJB underwent a significant renovation and expansion, more than doubling its original footprint. The architects sought to create a ‘dynamic urban setting’ within the building defined by a new five-story glass interior volume (GouldEvans, n.d). The building hosts a number of academic departments, including Art Education, Art History, Information Science, Interior Design, Family and Child Sciences, Textile and Consumer Sciences, Nutrition, Food and Exercise Sciences, as well as academic counselling and student advising offices (Facilities Department, 2007).

The MCH was completed in 2010. The architects were tasked with articulating in an architectural form the university’s commitment to interdisciplinarity as integral to humanistic discourse (Jaffe and faculty, 2010). The MCH is a contemporary interpretation of the mid-twentieth century modernism of Eero Saarinen and Max Abramovitz prevalent on the Brandeis campus (Bernstein, 1999). The architects adopted modernist language and aesthetics to today’s pedagogical model in which social boundaries and academic hierarchies are blurred. Offices were assigned somewhat randomly to faculty from a range of humanities departments – Classics, History, Literature, Art History, Asian and European Languages and Jewish Studies.

The programming documents for both buildings characterise them as reflecting contemporary approaches to the planning and design of academic facilities, and as supportive of current educational practices designed to encourage more open knowledge exchange and free-form learning (see Facilities Department, 2007; Jaffe and faculty, 2010). Both are general-purpose academic structures that contain classrooms, lecture halls, faculty offices, informal work/social areas, and meeting and eating areas.

1 Observations consisted of 36 hours of field work in each location in the fall of 2012. Users’ perspectives were obtained through open-ended interviews. Fourteen interviews were conducted in the WJB (six with faculty members, seven with students and one with an administrative staff) and in the MCH (three with faculty, eight with students, two with department administrative staff and a walk-through tour with the principal architect).


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6. The ‘quiet building’

The WJB consists of two distinct parts—the historic section clad with brick and oak panelling, and the new high modernist concrete, glass, and metal addition visible only from the interior. Although the WJB does incorporate an older structure, it is a contemporary building. Functionally, visually, and in terms of size, the addition dominates over the historic section (Figure 1). The new addition was erected on a rectangular structural grid, which defines the overall rectilinearity of its spaces, sequenced in longitudinal and transverse directions around the airy five-level atrium. Multipurpose spaces, classrooms, lounge areas, computer labs, a library, an art gallery, and a fashion merchandising showroom ring the atrium on various floors, each of which is visually open, and is accessible through a set of stacked stairways.

Figure 1: WJB new addition atrium with the old Dining Hall structure in the background.

The spatial make-up of the WJB is defined by two semi-autonomous configurations of the old dining hall and the new addition, connected by a central threshold area. Permeability relations and movement throughout the first floor2 are characterised by three major circulation rings (Figure 2). Two rings branch north and south from the main entry vestibule (node 1). The third starts in the new addition corridor (node 54) and is formed by nodes 56—64—70. All three merge together at the circulation space (node 54), immediately adjacent to the threshold space (nodes 3—5—50), which becomes a circulation pivot for the entire building. The threshold space is connected to the entry vestibule through two symmetrical passages.

2 Although the WJB is a five-story structure, the inquiry focused only on three floors. The ground floor was omitted because its programmatic designation as a student services, tutoring and academic advising centre, which fell outside the scope of this research. The fourth floor contains only research labs, no faculty offices, and has the fewest number of users by far. This paper focuses on the first floor configuration as representative of the three floors for which the initial analysis was performed.


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A measure of syntactical step depth represented in convex space maps reveals the level of complexity of spatial configuration: the more steps one must take to get from point A to point B, the more complex the configuration becomes, leading to higher degrees of segregation between spaces (Hillier and Penn, 1991). Overall, the WJB is a medium-depth structure with maximum of six syntactic steps (equivalent to turning around the corner six times) to access all spaces, and with an average of three steps (Figure 2).

Figure 2: WJB first floor justified graph and convex step depth map.

Further examination of the permeability characteristics in the WJB reveal how units are connected and integrated within the configuration. Connectivity describes the local connections of a spatial unit with its neighbouring units, while integration measures the global relationships of each spatial unit with the entire configuration (Hillier and Hanson, 1984). The connectivity map shows that the circulation pathways have a range of connectivity from high (eight to eleven connections to neighbouring spaces) to middle level (three to six connections) (Figure 3). The main entry vestibule and threshold area are within the mid-range with six connections. The majority of other spaces have direct access to only one or two other units, and therefore present low levels of connectivity. The most integrated spaces within the configuration are circulation pathways with high to middle level of integration. Offices, classrooms, and the exhibition gallery are least integrated. Thus, the WJB’s first floor permeability characteristics are defined by three major circulation rings, medium configuration depth, and mostly medium to low levels of connectivity and integration between spatial units.

Figure 3: WJB first floor convex maps: connectivity and integration.


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Visually accessible areas take up approximately 36% of the total first floor area. The visibility graph indicates that the spaces with the highest degree of visual connectivity (represented in red, Figure 4) are concentrated around the open central atrium, while the rest of the building has low visibility values. The areas most visible to users are the atrium, atrium pathways, and curtain glazed spaces immediately adjacent to the atrium void. The spaces with lowest visual access (represented in blue) are located around the perimeter of the building, with the majority located in the old section. Thus, from any of the low visibility locations users have unobstructed visual access to a small portion of the building.

Figure 4: WJB first floor visibility graph.

Space users described the WJB as a quiet, illusory, and airy space. Such descriptions indicate perceived presence/absence of people, especially in its public spaces, and suggest the condition of ‘co-absence’ (Hillier, 2005, p.10)—where users are not, rather than where they are. There did not appear to be many people around. Yet, on the occasion of a fire drill during the ethnographic phase of the research, all occupants were required to exit, revealing that there were a great many more people in the building than the quiet had suggested. In this large building, people were scattered, working in their offices behind closed doors. Spatial analysis of the WJB aligns with these observations and helps explain why the building is perceived as quiet.

The threshold area between the old and new architecture is one of the most important spaces. Its sectioned staircase, landing level changes, split directions, and low ceiling heights greatly affect permeability and visibility relations. Interviews indicated that the configuration strongly influences perceptions of the entire building. ‘It is not easy to navigate,’ as one graduate student said, ‘the landing of the main staircase brings you in the middle of nowhere, where there are no classrooms. It is hard to locate where the classrooms are. All classrooms are hidden’. Another participant, a faculty member, confessed that it took him ‘a lot of time to figure out the building’.

The three major navigational pathways, while providing convenient access to all spaces, disperse traffic throughout the building, and thus make visual or personal encounters among students and faculty less likely. The medium configuration depth produces a similar outcome by conveniently reducing the number of syntactical steps before a faculty member reaches his or her office or students arrive at their classrooms. By reducing time and distances to destinations, the designers significantly decreased the possibility of seeing or bumping into someone—colleagues, classmates, or other familiar faces—before the private office or classroom door closes. Medium to low connectivity levels and integration between spatial units, even public or social units, support this


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condition of perceived co-absence. One may objectively know that people are in the building, but neither see nor hear them.

7. The ‘airport lounge’

The MCH’s spatial geometry is defined by two asymmetrically assembled forms—an elongated rectangle and a triangle—seamlessly fused into one orderly shape. The two simple but opposing forms poignantly express the programmatic intensions of the two parts of the building. The acutely triangular east side contains a public atrium and a number of semi-public meeting and studying spaces. The west ‘faculty’ section is a much calmer and more assertive rectangle.

The three-story atrium void defines the public life of the building and serves as a community space, where interdisciplinary interactions and collaborations could materialise. It is the main intersection of internal and external pathways (Figure 5) and extends into an outdoor oval terrace.

Figure 5: MCH first floor atrium.

Directly beneath is the main entry foyer, where navigational paths leading to a large theatre/lecture hall, classrooms, and the atrium stairway converge. Lecture and seminar rooms are on the ground level of the faculty section. The ground floor configuration is characterised by two key features: split linear navigational pathways and absence of circulation rings, which create compact spaces that induce movement and interpersonal encounters. The ground floor entry vestibule serves as a transitional area leading to the ground floor classrooms, lecture hall and first floor atrium. It is a shallow spatial structure with low levels of connectivity (Figure 6).


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Figure 6: MCH ground floor justified graph and convex step depth and integration maps.

Each of the upper floor configurations is shaped by two distinct syntactic and functional zones: the public or ‘student’ meeting spaces and the faculty section, where faculty, teaching and graduate assistants and administrative offices are located. As the first floor graphs show, the configuration is asymmetrical, characterised by a shallow spatial structure, with an average of four syntactical steps (Figure 7).

Figure 7: MCH first floor justified graph and convex step depth map.

The main entry point in the configuration is a stairway located on the east side of the atrium. Users have the option of ‘landing’ in the atrium area, or continuing to other destinations in the building. Most spaces have low levels of connectivity (ranging from one to four connections with neighbouring spaces) and integration (Figure 8).


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Figure 8: MCH first floor convex maps: connectivity and integration.

Visibly accessible areas take up approximately 64% of the first floor area. This is achieved through the extensive use of glass, including partitioning the faculty and public spaces. As the visibility graph shows, spaces with the highest degree of visual connectivity (represented in red) are the atrium and the outdoor terrace (Figure 9). Linear geometry and spatial sequencing determine users’ visual field. Careful examination of the graph reveals that the highest visibility area in the atrium is an amplified extension of the visibility polygon along the west-east axis. Spaces with medium to low-medium degrees of visual connectivity are in the central part of the faculty section. Faculty offices along the north side are the least visually accessible.

Figure 9: MCH first floor visibility graph.

Along with linearity and juxtapositions of geometry, openness, and a high degree of visual access define the design of the MCH and perform functional, aesthetic, and pedagogical roles. The glass-mediated spaces distributed both horizontally and vertically throughout the building serve as visual communication windows, and define its functional zones.


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The first floor atrium is the hub for a great many academic and social activities. It is, by far, the most public space in the building. One of the study participants, an undergraduate student, poignantly compared this space with an airport lounge: ‘it feels like airport lounge…majestic, but simple… and glass is attractive’. Further analysis prompted closer associations between the spatial structure of the MCH and Saarinen’s airport conceptualizations. Airports and the MCH share a range of common elements of spatial organization—openness, high levels of permeability, and visual accessibility. This allows movement patterns to be loose and unimposing. They also share similarities in social dynamics—there is great potential for serendipitous encounters and both scheduled and unscheduled events occur often (timed departures, unanticipated delays, the arrival of a flight, etc.).

The airport lounge and the MCH, each in their own ways, allow users to ‘chill out’ or work, socialise or be by oneself, have coffee, or sleep. And finally, literally (like in an airport) or metaphorically (like in the MCH), users may wander, get lost, and be found again in a different place, predicament, time, or situation (Gough, 2006; Zilcosky, 2004). This is precisely what should happen in a learning environment where the goal is to enhance opportunities for creating and sharing new knowledge. The academic ‘airport lounge’ precipitates serendipitous situations for scholarly socializing, and, as evidenced by the testimonies of a number of faculty and student users, several academic collaborations between members of different departments and students from different degree programs have proceeded from chance meetings in the atrium.

8. Choreographing collaborative experiences

In the WJB, the significant spatial separation, dispersed navigational pathways, and low levels of visual access between educational spaces could be viewed as inhibiting meaningful collaborative experiences. Testimonies indicate that the layout of the WJB promotes socialization and interaction between students within academic units and in spaces assigned to their departments. Thus, an interior design student commented that the WJB is ‘very social’, and she always sees her fellow students. She was referring, however, only to the interior design first floor suite of studio and lab spaces. Graduate students congregate in the offices assigned to them: ‘I do see other students occasionally, but not too much due to the fact that I study independently and mostly in the teaching assistants’ office’, said an art education doctoral candidate. Participants also indicated that encounters and communications between students of different departments are rare and insubstantial. Students do congregate at times in the first floor cafeteria lounge, but in most cases observed interactions were between students from the same department. The majority of collaborative experiences between students were defined by curriculum assignments and co-presence of participants in predetermined spaces rather than through chance encounters brought about by the building’s configuration. As data show, serendipitous scholarly socialization between students in common areas is rare, and interdepartmental collaboration is not helped by the WJB’s configuration.

In the MCH, students tend to congregate primarily in the atrium and open terrace areas, while also using other public spaces—adjacent to the atrium second and third floor study areas. Some of the participants strongly associated these spaces with student users, and thus called them ‘student’ spaces. Qualitative data suggest that the two major student activities that happen in those spaces are studying (and an array of associated academic activities), and socializing (primarily while waiting for classes). The spatial layout does not support segregation of students based on department affiliation, but rather allows users to study by themselves or in small groups of two or three. Similar to the WJB, collaborative experiences among students in public spaces happen in small groups and are dictated primarily by class assignments rather than spatial configuration even though in the MCH there are more social areas, fewer pathways (only one major), spaces are better connected, and visibility is higher.

Collaborations between students and faculty are similarly not well supported by the configurations of the WJB or MCH. Students do not often encounter their teachers, and when they do, only brief social acknowledgement is likely. Collaborations happen only when students and faculty work on projects in classrooms or faculty offices, and are not perceived to be influenced by the spatial


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structure of the buildings. In the MCH, encounters between students and faculty were more frequent, but were described as polite exchanges or a ‘small social talk’. Academic conversations and discussions are mostly limited to scheduled meetings in faculty members’ private offices.

The major difference between the WJB and MCH is in the level of communication and academic collaboration between faculty members. This is in spite of the several layout and programmatic features common to the two buildings: offices are linearly sequenced along corridors and faculty from different departments often have adjacent offices. In both buildings faculty offices are the deepest spaces in the configuration. This allows their occupants privacy and control of their personal environments. Offices are similar in size (approximately 120 sq. ft. or 11.2 sq. m.), enclosed, and have comparable furnishings. Even so, faculty experiences in the two buildings differ significantly.

In the WJB the level of interpersonal encounters and collaboration was characterised as relatively low. This is partially due to the fact that, as some faculty observed, offices are scattered between the old and the new parts of the building, between different floors, and mixed up between different departments. According to one faculty member, the idea behind such planning of offices was precisely to foster collaboration between different departments. He admitted, however, that it ‘does not seem to be working’, and thinks there are too few encounters and little meaningful interaction between the departments and even between faculty within departments. One faculty participant felt isolated from his colleagues and observed that he would welcome a more vital scholarly community and higher level of collaboration, at least within his department. Another faculty member wished ‘to be closer’ to her colleagues, and added that ‘linearity and partitioning do not help’. The complexity of spatial configurations, combined with long distances between offices may be factors that discourage faculty from socializing.

In the MCH the situation is reversed. Participant testimonies indicate that faculty members actively socialise, and not only on the same floor, but on different floors despite the fact that offices were assigned somewhat randomly to different departments. The majority of fruitful encounters leading to academic collaborations happen in the faculty section. The spatial configuration within the section makes it ‘easy to step next door’ or even ‘go to a different floor’ to talk to a colleague. Moreover, the faculty section is not only conducive to meeting up, but creates an ‘enjoyable’ context for interpersonal encounters, so ‘there is no sense of isolation’. The overall assessment suggests that the MCH ‘definitely helps to see and know faces’ and ‘allows for faculty from different departments to meet and communicate’. Similarly, another faculty member elaborated: ‘the building definitely helps create a successful learning environment. Learning not only in a sense that students learn and study, but a learning environment for faculty as well, that allows them to do their scholarship and communicate with each other’.

A contributing factor is that in the MCH faculty offices are located in a separate section of the building. In the WJB offices are placed along the major circulation pathways, and are syntactically closer and better integrated with classrooms and other spaces in the building. Intuitively it may seem that the MCH configuration should lead to an increased sense of isolation. The data, however, point in the opposite direction. Faculty and staff in the MCH have a sense of closeness, collegiality, and scholarly community. Spatial layout and configuration play a major role in creating this environment. Another spatial feature that encourages socialization is organizing faculty spaces as a series of ‘neighbourhoods’ with small common areas (pods) serving as visual and functional anchors (Figure 10).


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Figure 10: MCH first floor plan with ‘neighbourhood’ outlined in red. Drawing: © Kallmann McKinnell and Wood Architects.

These small communities with easy access to and from create a sense of privacy while remaining visually connected with other spaces on the floor. Thus, the MCH configuration not only facilitates personal interactions between faculty members, but leads to interdisciplinary collaborations: a literature professor preparing to offer a joint seminar with a member of the art history faculty noted that if she and that art history professor ‘were not in this building, it would be much harder for them to plan a course’.

9. Conclusion

First, this study has reinforced the notion that such spatial elements as entranceways and atria play a major role in determining visibility relations, while having little effect on permeability. In terms of visibility, these spaces create a situation of visual awareness of co-presence (Hillier, 2007), a primary condition for the happening of encounters and social engagements in a space (Koch; Bergström and Marcus, 2012). The findings indicate that the two atria expand this function by establishing conditions for face-to-face encounters, which contribute to scholarly socializing.

Second, the more morphologically divided and dispersed spaces are, the less permeable and less visually accessible they are, and the greater the chance that users will divide into small groups. Activities taking place in these spaces will tend to homogenise. And vice versa, the more open spaces are, more permeable and visually accessible, the greater chance that users will forego collaboration and work individually.

Third, the separation of functional zones (i.e. spaces in which intended activities and uses are well defined) creates conditions for greater flexibility within those zones (see also Koch; Bergström and Marcus, 2012). Such separation leads to clustering of activities associated with one or another spatial grouping, and allows users be more comfortable and uninhibited in their actions, which fosters a fuller realization of the building’s programmatic and functional potential.

In sum, a building’s spatial configuration can either support or inhibit the formation of social communities and enhance or suppress users’ desire to collaborate, especially when combined with discrete non-spatial factors, including institutional culture and extracurricular programming. The results of this study suggest that educational spaces that most successfully support meaningful social and collaborative experiences are more enclosed, inhibit unproductive movement, and have narrow user profiles. The ‘airport lounge’ model invites and supports unintentional encounters and is perceived as dynamic, fluid, and responsive to its users, while the ‘quiet building’ model suppresses the collaborative instinct and is perceived as institutional and indifferent to individual users’ needs. Surprisingly, the morphologies of these two models can be similar, but the specific spatial attributes of the William Johnston Building and the Mandel Center explain, in part, the stark difference in the extent to which educational architecture is effective in choreographing collaboration by combining the language of spatial configuration, the individual, and social milieus to ‘bring something new and unexpected into the loop’ (Massumi, 2002, p. 191).


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Choreographing collaborative academic experiences